They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Netanyahu said "we are at war,"
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Last: 1 hr ago by Redbrickbear
You are so full of BS. They attacked Pearl Harbor. They didn't get what they wanted and Japan chose to sneak attack Pearl Harbor. They don't attack, the US does not enter the war. Same with Ukraine, Russia doesn't invade the US doesn't supply weapons systems.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
You seem to have it in your head that if somebody doesn't get what they want, they have the right to attack and it is the Nation being attacked fault. Screwed up logic. A Nation never has the right to attack, we had no right to invade Iraq. I was against it then and now. Preventive strikes are acts of war. There is no way to package that Japan was a victim of the US so their attacks are justified in WW2. You really seem to like this argument, Putin was forced. Japan was forced. Hamas was forced. That is BS.
I never once said Japan was right. The flaw in your logic is very common and very dangerous. You think that if we can point to something someone else did wrong, it means we no longer make choices or bear any responsibility for those choices. I'm sure that's not how you act in real life. So why should America act that way? We need nations to think and act like adults.FLBear5630 said:You are so full of BS. They attacked Pearl Harbor. They didn't get what they wanted and Japan chose to sneak attack Pearl Harbor. They don't attack, the US does not enter the war. Same with Ukraine, Russia doesn't invade the US doesn't supply weapons systems.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
You seem to have it in your head that if somebody doesn't get what they want, they have the right to attack and it is the Nation being attacked fault. Screwed up logic. A Nation never has the right to attack, we had no right to invade Iraq. I was against it then and now. Preventive strikes are acts of war. There is no way to package that Japan was a victim of the US so their attacks are justified in WW2. You really seem to like this argument, Putin was forced. Japan was forced. Hamas was forced. That is BS.
We knew Japan would not simply surrender. We chose to act in a way that led to war. Maybe there were good, fact-based reasons for it. Or maybe we were fed a lot of propaganda. Maybe you've believed a myth for as long as you can remember and it's made you that much more susceptible to myths about Russia and Ukraine. Don't you even want to know?
None that I'm aware of who are relevant on the world stage.KaiBear said:Come on fella....you can name 6-7 such countries right now.ATL Bear said:Curious what other countries you're referring to that sat on the sidelines?KaiBear said:Would have granted the PI their immediate independence.FLBear5630 said:I am curious, what would have been your option? Everything you said is accurate, maybe not precise but accurate. When you go into the reasons for decisions, usually there is a logical reason why it seemed like a good position at the time of decision. Whether or not it plays out that way of course is anyone's guess.KaiBear said:The United States went to war with Spain and took over its sovereign interests in the PI.ATL Bear said:So it was ok for Japan to go to war to take over other sovereign interests, but it was wrong to defend them? That's an interesting perspective.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Why did the US care if Japan established economic zones in China when we had conquered the Philippines and made it our colony ?
The British had economic zones in China.
The Dutch controlled oil fields in the southwest Pacific.
The French controlled Vietnam.
Exactly why was it necessary to go to war with Japan merely to enforce our ridiculous double standard ?
After Spanish troops left the PI, the US went back on its promise to grant the PI independence. and fought a brutal war against the locals. Of whom tens of thousands were killed or died in concentration camps.
Yet when Japan attempted the same in China, FDR took it upon himself to to risk American lives to stop them.
The hypocrisy was not only flagrantly obvious, but ultimately resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of US servicemen.
Only to see Mao take over China and oppose US interests throughout the Far East, but especially in Vietnam and Korea; where additional US dead stacked up. Even now communist China is a legitimate war threat to all of us.
It really doesn't get more obvious....however if one wants to argue for the sake of arguing.....I guess that's always an option.
I am interested in the decision point, when the decision was made with the information at hand. Not the 50 years later ramifications, hindsight is great. But, we don't get that luxury. What would have been the decisions you would have made, how would you have differed from Marshall and FDR. Serious question, not a provocation...
By the way, good article on this below. I love this thread, it leads me to all sorts of really interesting research...
Why the US Seized the Philippines at the End of the 19th Century The Diplomat
Then we could focus on our own needs and not worry about actions in the Far East.
Would hsve never allowed Churchill to brainwash FDR into attacking German subs without a formal declaration of war.
Would have allowed the nazis and Soviets to kill each other while Americans watched along the sidelines ( like a host of other countries ) saving the blood of our own people.
Sam Lowry said:I never once said Japan was right. The flaw in your logic is very common and very dangerous. You think that if we can point to something someone else did wrong, it means we no longer make choices or bear any responsibility for those choices. I'm sure that's not how you act in real life. So why should America act that way? We need nations to think and act like adults.FLBear5630 said:You are so full of BS. They attacked Pearl Harbor. They didn't get what they wanted and Japan chose to sneak attack Pearl Harbor. They don't attack, the US does not enter the war. Same with Ukraine, Russia doesn't invade the US doesn't supply weapons systems.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
You seem to have it in your head that if somebody doesn't get what they want, they have the right to attack and it is the Nation being attacked fault. Screwed up logic. A Nation never has the right to attack, we had no right to invade Iraq. I was against it then and now. Preventive strikes are acts of war. There is no way to package that Japan was a victim of the US so their attacks are justified in WW2. You really seem to like this argument, Putin was forced. Japan was forced. Hamas was forced. That is BS.
We knew Japan would not simply surrender. We chose to act in a way that led to war. Maybe there were good, fact-based reasons for it. Or maybe we were fed a lot of propaganda. Maybe you've believed a myth for as long as you can remember and it's made you that much more susceptible to myths about Russia and Ukraine. Don't you even want to know?
Your flaw is that you don't separate physical action from political. The US has every right not to sell oil, for any reason we choose. That is not an act of war. Sanctions against Russia are not an act of war. Invading, bombing and physical attacks (cyber included) are acts of war. You are on dangerous ground when you enable those that use violence by giving them excuses to take what they cannot buy.
We asked them multiple times to leave and they refused. Not sure you understand what was happening over there. Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
you are quite the establishmentarian.FLBear5630 said:Some of your responses are so factful and thought based that I enjoy your responses. Then you throw out MAGA crap like this: "We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it."whiterock said:We have to do both......FLBear5630 said:THANK YOU! I have been saying this for years, you do not get out of this through budget cuts it is unsustainable. You have to increase revenues. Where we have a disagreement, I believe the Fed can play a role in new investments in tech to expand the market. You guys seem to want the Fed out. I think it is too much for non-govt. Look at Space X, how much of their money was Fed? 380 billion (might be all of Elon's companies don't remember, the point is it was substantial.whiterock said:You are just mad at how big the budget deficit is and want to start cutting in ways that will have negligible reduction in anything other than our national security position.Realitybites said:whiterock said:
Kai is trying to argue that since war never eliminates tyranny or imperialism, etc...., there is no point in resisting it anytime, anywhere.
Not at all.
We just disagree with your side about who the tyrants and imperialists are.
Oh that is crystal clear. It's always us, according to you.
A NATO that has been edging ever eastward at the behest of the MIC in violation of the promises we made to the Russians is much more aptly described as imperialists than a Russia that has moved to secure some neighboring territories populated by Russians.
So what? Zero chance the Russians ever thought Baker's "promise" meant "never." The context was....the USSR was collapsing and we wanted to assure Russia we were not going to rush in and play Risk all the way to the Russian border. And we didn't. We were very deliberate, over the course of many years taking new members. Yes, we admitted the Baltics. Because they asked. We did not admit Finland or Sweden, who didn't ask until RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE. Neither did we admit Belarus or Ukraine, latter of which DID NOT APPLY FOR NATO MEMBERSHIP UNTIL INVADED BY RUSSIA. Same for anybody in the Caucasus. We didn't push east. East begged us to come in. More to the point WE INVADED NOBODY.
Likewise EU member states who are banning political parties, prohibiting the freedom of religion, and arresting people for thought crime are the tyrants. In fact since Covid there hasn't been much daylight between the behavior of those article 5 "allies" of ours and the CCP.
The idea that Europe is a greater police state that Russia is comical, but even if we admit your silly premise, it's worth nothing we've had a lot of "unsavory" allies over the years and will have plenty more in the future. Sure, it's nice to have an Israel or Japan as an ally....stable developed western-oriented systems with constitutional rule of law, many shared social values, and lots of common interests. Common interests are instructive. Turkey is a good ally to have. So is Singapore. In a pinch, we'll even use a Stalin or a Chang Kai-shek.
I'm perfectly willing to go to war when it is necessary. JFK: let's leave Castro in place. Dulles: Let's have a color revolution that overthrows Castro/Bay of Pigs. Me: Cuba is 90 miles from Key West. Annex it, State #51. Militarize and seal the Mexican border.
Wait. I thought you've been saying we are evil imperialists.
NEWS FLASH: Trump is planning to reduce the budget primarily with rapid economic growth. You cannot slash the budget 20% and have an economic growth record to run on in the mid-terms. That budget deficit is part of GDP.....
We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it.
The Dept of State has every Embassy in the world prepare a "labor report" on the state of labor movements in those countries. That's a several hundred officers around the world spending a few days/weeks drafting a massive document which is sent to several offices in the USG who collate and evaluate and send out more reports, to people who then do the same, and on and on..... That process is not just tracking labor as a player in politics....it's coddling of US labor movement. Probably could save a 8-digit number, minimum, just eliminating that one report (and most of the jobs that deal with it). There are thousands and thousands of make-work processes like that going on all over the government. No real reason to track foreign labor movements as anything other than players in their own political systems. Hell, a few of the larger embassies even have designated "labor officer" positions.
Not every thing the Federal Government does is essential. A fairly large percentage of what it does is expendable. If we are the least bit worried about deficits, we have to get very hard-nosed about cost-benefit. Cut big. If you see arterial bleeds, you fix them. If you don't, you know you cut something inconsequential.
There is no risk to cutting too much. We can always add it back if we find out we made a mistake.
Or maybe it isn't crap at all. For sure, we could kill DOEd tomorrow, block grant funding to the states and save a hundred billion or so. We made it to 1980 without one. Are we $250b/yr better off because we have one now?
Math fact: You cannot fix a trillion dollar deficit if you do not take a machete to some big numbers.
Maybe in Intel, which you know a lot more than me, so have at it cut the intel and defense budgets in half. No one will notice...
I saw a twitter post from a sensible guy the other day quoting numerous intel officials saying that the Clandestine Service could be cut from 1500 to 50 people with little loss of effectiveness. Now that is well and truly crap. A 1500 officer CS is Cold War level staffing. So it's hardly unreasonable on its face. But somewhere over a third of those folks are in staff & analysis posts in CONUS. More importantly, force structure is aimed at counter-terrorism. Sure, we could eliminate half of the Conus positions with little impact on operations. And sure, we could restructure the force to meet the emerging great power competition. Reality is, we need to do both.
We did slash the CS in the Cold War demobilization. And then 7yrs later we had to build it back after 9/11. There is a lesson there: you demobilize because you can't afford to maintain max effort. You can always rebuild. Sure, we've had some bobbles along the way, but we're still the mightiest country on earth. So it can be done. Just as every nation in history has done with its military from time to time. You have to demobilize after a war.....and then build back when threats loom.
You are elevating risk out of proportion. If we cut too far, we can always add it back. It's not like trees don't grow back, or can't be logged to thin out for understory habitat, or burned in place to kill pests or disease, etc...... Let's slash some regs & build a few refineries. If we change our mind a decade down the road, we can always close some old ones. Geez we have wasted money on wind & solar. Gotta stop that and build some coal and gas generation, otherwise there won't be enough power for those 40m illegals we've let in.
I'm not the ideologue here. You are..... (wink).
But the bottom line is most of environmental, engineering and transportation are underfunded versus the cost. You cut the transportation spending by 1/2 and people are going to notice.
Underfunded on what basis?
If you eliminate the underlying regulation, you're not underfunded at all.
That's what DOGE is plainly trying to do - kill a big piece of the administrative state by doing away with the underlying regulations that require its existence.
Look at Interior, what they did to the National Forests by reducing "management". We have wildfires all over. Ask anyone that live in the mountains, controlled burns and management is necessary to keep it from becoming a tinderbox. That cost money.
Bad misread. The change in management you cite was not a budgetary thing at all. It was a green initiative, liberals using their power in office on a great moral endeavor - don't scar the land with logging, let nature do its thing.....
So, what half gets cut?
DOEd is a good place to start. We can cut a lot more than half there.
The administrative state is a problem.
Time to pare it back, severely.
It will grow back. Trust me.
All for it, as long as we can still get done what needs to get done. And don't tell me the private sector will step in and do it better, most of the "waste" is for consultants. The "extension of staff" 40 hour embedded consultants are more of a problem than the Fed employee making 100k a year. We pay 4 to 6 times more for each consultant. The "Deep State" is much more than mid-level Federal employees. Look how much the "Belt Way" consultants make? Look at how much the same military and Fed employees make after retirement going to the "private sector".whiterock said:you are quite the establishmentarian.FLBear5630 said:Some of your responses are so factful and thought based that I enjoy your responses. Then you throw out MAGA crap like this: "We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it."whiterock said:We have to do both......FLBear5630 said:THANK YOU! I have been saying this for years, you do not get out of this through budget cuts it is unsustainable. You have to increase revenues. Where we have a disagreement, I believe the Fed can play a role in new investments in tech to expand the market. You guys seem to want the Fed out. I think it is too much for non-govt. Look at Space X, how much of their money was Fed? 380 billion (might be all of Elon's companies don't remember, the point is it was substantial.whiterock said:You are just mad at how big the budget deficit is and want to start cutting in ways that will have negligible reduction in anything other than our national security position.Realitybites said:whiterock said:
Kai is trying to argue that since war never eliminates tyranny or imperialism, etc...., there is no point in resisting it anytime, anywhere.
Not at all.
We just disagree with your side about who the tyrants and imperialists are.
Oh that is crystal clear. It's always us, according to you.
A NATO that has been edging ever eastward at the behest of the MIC in violation of the promises we made to the Russians is much more aptly described as imperialists than a Russia that has moved to secure some neighboring territories populated by Russians.
So what? Zero chance the Russians ever thought Baker's "promise" meant "never." The context was....the USSR was collapsing and we wanted to assure Russia we were not going to rush in and play Risk all the way to the Russian border. And we didn't. We were very deliberate, over the course of many years taking new members. Yes, we admitted the Baltics. Because they asked. We did not admit Finland or Sweden, who didn't ask until RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE. Neither did we admit Belarus or Ukraine, latter of which DID NOT APPLY FOR NATO MEMBERSHIP UNTIL INVADED BY RUSSIA. Same for anybody in the Caucasus. We didn't push east. East begged us to come in. More to the point WE INVADED NOBODY.
Likewise EU member states who are banning political parties, prohibiting the freedom of religion, and arresting people for thought crime are the tyrants. In fact since Covid there hasn't been much daylight between the behavior of those article 5 "allies" of ours and the CCP.
The idea that Europe is a greater police state that Russia is comical, but even if we admit your silly premise, it's worth nothing we've had a lot of "unsavory" allies over the years and will have plenty more in the future. Sure, it's nice to have an Israel or Japan as an ally....stable developed western-oriented systems with constitutional rule of law, many shared social values, and lots of common interests. Common interests are instructive. Turkey is a good ally to have. So is Singapore. In a pinch, we'll even use a Stalin or a Chang Kai-shek.
I'm perfectly willing to go to war when it is necessary. JFK: let's leave Castro in place. Dulles: Let's have a color revolution that overthrows Castro/Bay of Pigs. Me: Cuba is 90 miles from Key West. Annex it, State #51. Militarize and seal the Mexican border.
Wait. I thought you've been saying we are evil imperialists.
NEWS FLASH: Trump is planning to reduce the budget primarily with rapid economic growth. You cannot slash the budget 20% and have an economic growth record to run on in the mid-terms. That budget deficit is part of GDP.....
We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it.
The Dept of State has every Embassy in the world prepare a "labor report" on the state of labor movements in those countries. That's a several hundred officers around the world spending a few days/weeks drafting a massive document which is sent to several offices in the USG who collate and evaluate and send out more reports, to people who then do the same, and on and on..... That process is not just tracking labor as a player in politics....it's coddling of US labor movement. Probably could save a 8-digit number, minimum, just eliminating that one report (and most of the jobs that deal with it). There are thousands and thousands of make-work processes like that going on all over the government. No real reason to track foreign labor movements as anything other than players in their own political systems. Hell, a few of the larger embassies even have designated "labor officer" positions.
Not every thing the Federal Government does is essential. A fairly large percentage of what it does is expendable. If we are the least bit worried about deficits, we have to get very hard-nosed about cost-benefit. Cut big. If you see arterial bleeds, you fix them. If you don't, you know you cut something inconsequential.
There is no risk to cutting too much. We can always add it back if we find out we made a mistake.
Or maybe it isn't crap at all. For sure, we could kill DOEd tomorrow, block grant funding to the states and save a hundred billion or so. We made it to 1980 without one. Are we $250b/yr better off because we have one now?
Math fact: You cannot fix a trillion dollar deficit if you do not take a machete to some big numbers.
Maybe in Intel, which you know a lot more than me, so have at it cut the intel and defense budgets in half. No one will notice...
I saw a twitter post from a sensible guy the other day quoting numerous intel officials saying that the Clandestine Service could be cut from 1500 to 50 people with little loss of effectiveness. Now that is well and truly crap. A 1500 officer CS is Cold War level staffing. So it's hardly unreasonable on its face. But somewhere over a third of those folks are in staff & analysis posts in CONUS. More importantly, force structure is aimed at counter-terrorism. Sure, we could eliminate half of the Conus positions with little impact on operations. And sure, we could restructure the force to meet the emerging great power competition. Reality is, we need to do both.
We did slash the CS in the Cold War demobilization. And then 7yrs later we had to build it back after 9/11. There is a lesson there: you demobilize because you can't afford to maintain max effort. You can always rebuild. Sure, we've had some bobbles along the way, but we're still the mightiest country on earth. So it can be done. Just as every nation in history has done with its military from time to time. You have to demobilize after a war.....and then build back when threats loom.
You are elevating risk out of proportion. If we cut too far, we can always add it back. It's not like trees don't grow back, or can't be logged to thin out for understory habitat, or burned in place to kill pests or disease, etc...... Let's slash some regs & build a few refineries. If we change our mind a decade down the road, we can always close some old ones. Geez we have wasted money on wind & solar. Gotta stop that and build some coal and gas generation, otherwise there won't be enough power for those 40m illegals we've let in.
I'm not the ideologue here. You are..... (wink).
But the bottom line is most of environmental, engineering and transportation are underfunded versus the cost. You cut the transportation spending by 1/2 and people are going to notice.
Underfunded on what basis?
If you eliminate the underlying regulation, you're not underfunded at all.
That's what DOGE is plainly trying to do - kill a big piece of the administrative state by doing away with the underlying regulations that require its existence.
Look at Interior, what they did to the National Forests by reducing "management". We have wildfires all over. Ask anyone that live in the mountains, controlled burns and management is necessary to keep it from becoming a tinderbox. That cost money.
Bad misread. The change in management you cite was not a budgetary thing at all. It was a green initiative, liberals using their power in office on a great moral endeavor - don't scar the land with logging, let nature do its thing.....
So, what half gets cut?
DOEd is a good place to start. We can cut a lot more than half there.
The administrative state is a problem.
Time to pare it back, severely.
It will grow back. Trust me.
Watch, your paring back will end up costing the tax payer more money because it will be outsourced, Defense, transportation, energy, land management, and every thing else the Fed does still has to be done. This is a fight for who will control the trough. Look at Iraq, that is what is coming Blackwater, Haliburton, and the gang are going domestic. And you guys are cheering... Dick and Liz Cheney love this...
FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
Yeah, killing thousands of locals in concentration camps might be considered destructive.
Especially after such locals compelled the Spanish garrison in Manila and throughout the PI to surrender to the Americans rather than butchered.
Might be considered destructive to promise independence, then lie and make the PI a colony to US imperialism.
The simple reason Americans are taught so little about the US domination of the PI is that it was horrible; and went against everything we are taught to believe about ourselves.
whiterock said:you are quite the establishmentarian.FLBear5630 said:Some of your responses are so factful and thought based that I enjoy your responses. Then you throw out MAGA crap like this: "We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it."whiterock said:We have to do both......FLBear5630 said:THANK YOU! I have been saying this for years, you do not get out of this through budget cuts it is unsustainable. You have to increase revenues. Where we have a disagreement, I believe the Fed can play a role in new investments in tech to expand the market. You guys seem to want the Fed out. I think it is too much for non-govt. Look at Space X, how much of their money was Fed? 380 billion (might be all of Elon's companies don't remember, the point is it was substantial.whiterock said:You are just mad at how big the budget deficit is and want to start cutting in ways that will have negligible reduction in anything other than our national security position.Realitybites said:whiterock said:
Kai is trying to argue that since war never eliminates tyranny or imperialism, etc...., there is no point in resisting it anytime, anywhere.
Not at all.
We just disagree with your side about who the tyrants and imperialists are.
Oh that is crystal clear. It's always us, according to you.
A NATO that has been edging ever eastward at the behest of the MIC in violation of the promises we made to the Russians is much more aptly described as imperialists than a Russia that has moved to secure some neighboring territories populated by Russians.
So what? Zero chance the Russians ever thought Baker's "promise" meant "never." The context was....the USSR was collapsing and we wanted to assure Russia we were not going to rush in and play Risk all the way to the Russian border. And we didn't. We were very deliberate, over the course of many years taking new members. Yes, we admitted the Baltics. Because they asked. We did not admit Finland or Sweden, who didn't ask until RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE. Neither did we admit Belarus or Ukraine, latter of which DID NOT APPLY FOR NATO MEMBERSHIP UNTIL INVADED BY RUSSIA. Same for anybody in the Caucasus. We didn't push east. East begged us to come in. More to the point WE INVADED NOBODY.
Likewise EU member states who are banning political parties, prohibiting the freedom of religion, and arresting people for thought crime are the tyrants. In fact since Covid there hasn't been much daylight between the behavior of those article 5 "allies" of ours and the CCP.
The idea that Europe is a greater police state that Russia is comical, but even if we admit your silly premise, it's worth nothing we've had a lot of "unsavory" allies over the years and will have plenty more in the future. Sure, it's nice to have an Israel or Japan as an ally....stable developed western-oriented systems with constitutional rule of law, many shared social values, and lots of common interests. Common interests are instructive. Turkey is a good ally to have. So is Singapore. In a pinch, we'll even use a Stalin or a Chang Kai-shek.
I'm perfectly willing to go to war when it is necessary. JFK: let's leave Castro in place. Dulles: Let's have a color revolution that overthrows Castro/Bay of Pigs. Me: Cuba is 90 miles from Key West. Annex it, State #51. Militarize and seal the Mexican border.
Wait. I thought you've been saying we are evil imperialists.
NEWS FLASH: Trump is planning to reduce the budget primarily with rapid economic growth. You cannot slash the budget 20% and have an economic growth record to run on in the mid-terms. That budget deficit is part of GDP.....
We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it.
The Dept of State has every Embassy in the world prepare a "labor report" on the state of labor movements in those countries. That's a several hundred officers around the world spending a few days/weeks drafting a massive document which is sent to several offices in the USG who collate and evaluate and send out more reports, to people who then do the same, and on and on..... That process is not just tracking labor as a player in politics....it's coddling of US labor movement. Probably could save a 8-digit number, minimum, just eliminating that one report (and most of the jobs that deal with it). There are thousands and thousands of make-work processes like that going on all over the government. No real reason to track foreign labor movements as anything other than players in their own political systems. Hell, a few of the larger embassies even have designated "labor officer" positions.
Not every thing the Federal Government does is essential. A fairly large percentage of what it does is expendable. If we are the least bit worried about deficits, we have to get very hard-nosed about cost-benefit. Cut big. If you see arterial bleeds, you fix them. If you don't, you know you cut something inconsequential.
There is no risk to cutting too much. We can always add it back if we find out we made a mistake.
Or maybe it isn't crap at all. For sure, we could kill DOEd tomorrow, block grant funding to the states and save a hundred billion or so. We made it to 1980 without one. Are we $250b/yr better off because we have one now?
Math fact: You cannot fix a trillion dollar deficit if you do not take a machete to some big numbers.
Maybe in Intel, which you know a lot more than me, so have at it cut the intel and defense budgets in half. No one will notice...
I saw a twitter post from a sensible guy the other day quoting numerous intel officials saying that the Clandestine Service could be cut from 1500 to 50 people with little loss of effectiveness. Now that is well and truly crap. A 1500 officer CS is Cold War level staffing. So it's hardly unreasonable on its face. But somewhere over a third of those folks are in staff & analysis posts in CONUS. More importantly, force structure is aimed at counter-terrorism. Sure, we could eliminate half of the Conus positions with little impact on operations. And sure, we could restructure the force to meet the emerging great power competition. Reality is, we need to do both.
We did slash the CS in the Cold War demobilization. And then 7yrs later we had to build it back after 9/11. There is a lesson there: you demobilize because you can't afford to maintain max effort. You can always rebuild. Sure, we've had some bobbles along the way, but we're still the mightiest country on earth. So it can be done. Just as every nation in history has done with its military from time to time. You have to demobilize after a war.....and then build back when threats loom.
You are elevating risk out of proportion. If we cut too far, we can always add it back. It's not like trees don't grow back, or can't be logged to thin out for understory habitat, or burned in place to kill pests or disease, etc...... Let's slash some regs & build a few refineries. If we change our mind a decade down the road, we can always close some old ones. Geez we have wasted money on wind & solar. Gotta stop that and build some coal and gas generation, otherwise there won't be enough power for those 40m illegals we've let in.
I'm not the ideologue here. You are..... (wink).
But the bottom line is most of environmental, engineering and transportation are underfunded versus the cost. You cut the transportation spending by 1/2 and people are going to notice.
Underfunded on what basis?
If you eliminate the underlying regulation, you're not underfunded at all.
That's what DOGE is plainly trying to do - kill a big piece of the administrative state by doing away with the underlying regulations that require its existence.
Look at Interior, what they did to the National Forests by reducing "management". We have wildfires all over. Ask anyone that live in the mountains, controlled burns and management is necessary to keep it from becoming a tinderbox. That cost money.
Bad misread. The change in management you cite was not a budgetary thing at all. It was a green initiative, liberals using their power in office on a great moral endeavor - don't scar the land with logging, let nature do its thing.....
So, what half gets cut?
DOEd is a good place to start. We can cut a lot more than half there.
The administrative state is a problem.
Time to pare it back, severely.
It will grow back. Trust me.
Glad we agree on this!
The only part of government that should be growing is border patrol.
That's something I can agree with!
The_barBEARian said:whiterock said:you are quite the establishmentarian.FLBear5630 said:Some of your responses are so factful and thought based that I enjoy your responses. Then you throw out MAGA crap like this: "We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it."whiterock said:We have to do both......FLBear5630 said:THANK YOU! I have been saying this for years, you do not get out of this through budget cuts it is unsustainable. You have to increase revenues. Where we have a disagreement, I believe the Fed can play a role in new investments in tech to expand the market. You guys seem to want the Fed out. I think it is too much for non-govt. Look at Space X, how much of their money was Fed? 380 billion (might be all of Elon's companies don't remember, the point is it was substantial.whiterock said:You are just mad at how big the budget deficit is and want to start cutting in ways that will have negligible reduction in anything other than our national security position.Realitybites said:whiterock said:
Kai is trying to argue that since war never eliminates tyranny or imperialism, etc...., there is no point in resisting it anytime, anywhere.
Not at all.
We just disagree with your side about who the tyrants and imperialists are.
Oh that is crystal clear. It's always us, according to you.
A NATO that has been edging ever eastward at the behest of the MIC in violation of the promises we made to the Russians is much more aptly described as imperialists than a Russia that has moved to secure some neighboring territories populated by Russians.
So what? Zero chance the Russians ever thought Baker's "promise" meant "never." The context was....the USSR was collapsing and we wanted to assure Russia we were not going to rush in and play Risk all the way to the Russian border. And we didn't. We were very deliberate, over the course of many years taking new members. Yes, we admitted the Baltics. Because they asked. We did not admit Finland or Sweden, who didn't ask until RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE. Neither did we admit Belarus or Ukraine, latter of which DID NOT APPLY FOR NATO MEMBERSHIP UNTIL INVADED BY RUSSIA. Same for anybody in the Caucasus. We didn't push east. East begged us to come in. More to the point WE INVADED NOBODY.
Likewise EU member states who are banning political parties, prohibiting the freedom of religion, and arresting people for thought crime are the tyrants. In fact since Covid there hasn't been much daylight between the behavior of those article 5 "allies" of ours and the CCP.
The idea that Europe is a greater police state that Russia is comical, but even if we admit your silly premise, it's worth nothing we've had a lot of "unsavory" allies over the years and will have plenty more in the future. Sure, it's nice to have an Israel or Japan as an ally....stable developed western-oriented systems with constitutional rule of law, many shared social values, and lots of common interests. Common interests are instructive. Turkey is a good ally to have. So is Singapore. In a pinch, we'll even use a Stalin or a Chang Kai-shek.
I'm perfectly willing to go to war when it is necessary. JFK: let's leave Castro in place. Dulles: Let's have a color revolution that overthrows Castro/Bay of Pigs. Me: Cuba is 90 miles from Key West. Annex it, State #51. Militarize and seal the Mexican border.
Wait. I thought you've been saying we are evil imperialists.
NEWS FLASH: Trump is planning to reduce the budget primarily with rapid economic growth. You cannot slash the budget 20% and have an economic growth record to run on in the mid-terms. That budget deficit is part of GDP.....
We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it.
The Dept of State has every Embassy in the world prepare a "labor report" on the state of labor movements in those countries. That's a several hundred officers around the world spending a few days/weeks drafting a massive document which is sent to several offices in the USG who collate and evaluate and send out more reports, to people who then do the same, and on and on..... That process is not just tracking labor as a player in politics....it's coddling of US labor movement. Probably could save a 8-digit number, minimum, just eliminating that one report (and most of the jobs that deal with it). There are thousands and thousands of make-work processes like that going on all over the government. No real reason to track foreign labor movements as anything other than players in their own political systems. Hell, a few of the larger embassies even have designated "labor officer" positions.
Not every thing the Federal Government does is essential. A fairly large percentage of what it does is expendable. If we are the least bit worried about deficits, we have to get very hard-nosed about cost-benefit. Cut big. If you see arterial bleeds, you fix them. If you don't, you know you cut something inconsequential.
There is no risk to cutting too much. We can always add it back if we find out we made a mistake.
Or maybe it isn't crap at all. For sure, we could kill DOEd tomorrow, block grant funding to the states and save a hundred billion or so. We made it to 1980 without one. Are we $250b/yr better off because we have one now?
Math fact: You cannot fix a trillion dollar deficit if you do not take a machete to some big numbers.
Maybe in Intel, which you know a lot more than me, so have at it cut the intel and defense budgets in half. No one will notice...
I saw a twitter post from a sensible guy the other day quoting numerous intel officials saying that the Clandestine Service could be cut from 1500 to 50 people with little loss of effectiveness. Now that is well and truly crap. A 1500 officer CS is Cold War level staffing. So it's hardly unreasonable on its face. But somewhere over a third of those folks are in staff & analysis posts in CONUS. More importantly, force structure is aimed at counter-terrorism. Sure, we could eliminate half of the Conus positions with little impact on operations. And sure, we could restructure the force to meet the emerging great power competition. Reality is, we need to do both.
We did slash the CS in the Cold War demobilization. And then 7yrs later we had to build it back after 9/11. There is a lesson there: you demobilize because you can't afford to maintain max effort. You can always rebuild. Sure, we've had some bobbles along the way, but we're still the mightiest country on earth. So it can be done. Just as every nation in history has done with its military from time to time. You have to demobilize after a war.....and then build back when threats loom.
You are elevating risk out of proportion. If we cut too far, we can always add it back. It's not like trees don't grow back, or can't be logged to thin out for understory habitat, or burned in place to kill pests or disease, etc...... Let's slash some regs & build a few refineries. If we change our mind a decade down the road, we can always close some old ones. Geez we have wasted money on wind & solar. Gotta stop that and build some coal and gas generation, otherwise there won't be enough power for those 40m illegals we've let in.
I'm not the ideologue here. You are..... (wink).
But the bottom line is most of environmental, engineering and transportation are underfunded versus the cost. You cut the transportation spending by 1/2 and people are going to notice.
Underfunded on what basis?
If you eliminate the underlying regulation, you're not underfunded at all.
That's what DOGE is plainly trying to do - kill a big piece of the administrative state by doing away with the underlying regulations that require its existence.
Look at Interior, what they did to the National Forests by reducing "management". We have wildfires all over. Ask anyone that live in the mountains, controlled burns and management is necessary to keep it from becoming a tinderbox. That cost money.
Bad misread. The change in management you cite was not a budgetary thing at all. It was a green initiative, liberals using their power in office on a great moral endeavor - don't scar the land with logging, let nature do its thing.....
So, what half gets cut?
DOEd is a good place to start. We can cut a lot more than half there.
The administrative state is a problem.
Time to pare it back, severely.
It will grow back. Trust me.
Glad we agree on this!
The only part of government that should be growing is border patrol.
I can think of several, that support that mission, namely DEA, ATF Customs all three go with Border Patrol. We need more Customs as containers into Ports and over Border is a real problem. Now if you are talking giving Border those responsibilities?
My point is all these issues are much more complicated than simply saying more this and less that. I agree with you, we need more Border protection, it has become a National Security issue.
John McCain's terrorist buddies in Syria have broken a multi year long truce, attacked Aleppo and are threatening to behead the Bishop of the city, Ephraim Maalouli. He reportedly responded by courageously saying he was not afraid and would not leave Aleppo or abandon the city's Christians.
His predecessor, Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, along with Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo Yohanna Ibrahim, were abducted by militants in Syria.
In January 2020, an investigative report alleged that both bishops were killed in 2016.
Your prayers for his safety, or strength to face his martyrdom as well as for any other brothers and sisters in the Church of Antioch facing such a fate would be appreciated.
His predecessor, Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, along with Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo Yohanna Ibrahim, were abducted by militants in Syria.
In January 2020, an investigative report alleged that both bishops were killed in 2016.
Your prayers for his safety, or strength to face his martyrdom as well as for any other brothers and sisters in the Church of Antioch facing such a fate would be appreciated.
...and also prayers for President Assad's government that it survives and is able to continue protecting Christians in the region.
"On November 27, President Bashar Al-Assad decreed the establishment of the University of Christian Theology and religious and Philosophical Studies, based in Damascus, the Patriarchate reports.
The new school includes the Faculties of Christian Theology, Philosophical Studies and Comparative Religion, and Religious Studies and History of Religions, and the Institute of Ancient Languages. The school is able to grant a bachelor's degree from the three faculties, while the institute "provides professional language training in ancient languages to university students and others interested in deepening their studies in theology, religion, philosophy, and related historical studies."
"On November 27, President Bashar Al-Assad decreed the establishment of the University of Christian Theology and religious and Philosophical Studies, based in Damascus, the Patriarchate reports.
The new school includes the Faculties of Christian Theology, Philosophical Studies and Comparative Religion, and Religious Studies and History of Religions, and the Institute of Ancient Languages. The school is able to grant a bachelor's degree from the three faculties, while the institute "provides professional language training in ancient languages to university students and others interested in deepening their studies in theology, religion, philosophy, and related historical studies."
In other news, Georgia is experiencing what some are calling its "Maidan moment," with anti-Russian protests brewing in the capital.
What are the odds that these 100% organic and spontaneous riots would break out just as Biden is shuffling off the stage?
What are the odds that these 100% organic and spontaneous riots would break out just as Biden is shuffling off the stage?
And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
LOLsombear said:And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
Do you still hate the British for burning our capitol in 1813 and arming Indians against our western settlers ?
US criminal acts toward the Filipinos ended 6 generations ago.
A ton of money and a lot of women have been exchanged since then.
My wife works with a lot of Filipino Nurses and I have been to some Filipino weddings. She says they produce the best Nurses there.sombear said:And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
They've had that affinity for a long time. It's simple: They're thankful we didn't allow an imperial power, such as Japan or Germany, to take them over.KaiBear said:LOLsombear said:And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
Do you still hate the British for burning our capitol in 1813 and arming Indians against our western settlers ?
US criminal acts toward the Filipinos ended 6 generations ago.
A ton of money and a lot of women have been exchanged since then.
sombear said:They've had that affinity for a long time. It's simple: They're thankful we didn't allow an imperial power, such as Japan or Germany, to take them over.KaiBear said:LOLsombear said:And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
Do you still hate the British for burning our capitol in 1813 and arming Indians against our western settlers ?
US criminal acts toward the Filipinos ended 6 generations ago.
A ton of money and a lot of women have been exchanged since then.
Generations die off over time.
Memories fade.
Needs change.
Doesn't alter the historical record in the least.
Some ugly moments from us, but the Koreans would be thankful if that's all that happened to them.KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Agree, but nuance matters in foreign policy, particularly in the late 19th/early20th Centuries.KaiBear said:sombear said:They've had that affinity for a long time. It's simple: They're thankful we didn't allow an imperial power, such as Japan or Germany, to take them over.KaiBear said:LOLsombear said:And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
Do you still hate the British for burning our capitol in 1813 and arming Indians against our western settlers ?
US criminal acts toward the Filipinos ended 6 generations ago.
A ton of money and a lot of women have been exchanged since then.
Generations die off over time.
Memories fade.
Needs change.
Doesn't alter the historical record in the least.
There were countries who were imperialistic simply because they craved dominance and power. Relative to the Philippines, we had good intentions - i.e., to temporarily assert control and eventually help it become independent. We worked toward that and eventually got there. Yes, there were atrocities in the interim - by everyone involved.
sombear said:Agree, but nuance matters in foreign policy, particularly in the late 19th/early20th Centuries.KaiBear said:sombear said:They've had that affinity for a long time. It's simple: They're thankful we didn't allow an imperial power, such as Japan or Germany, to take them over.KaiBear said:LOLsombear said:And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
Do you still hate the British for burning our capitol in 1813 and arming Indians against our western settlers ?
US criminal acts toward the Filipinos ended 6 generations ago.
A ton of money and a lot of women have been exchanged since then.
Generations die off over time.
Memories fade.
Needs change.
Doesn't alter the historical record in the least.
There were countries who were imperialistic simply because they craved dominance and power. Relative to the Philippines, we had good intentions - i.e., to temporarily assert control and eventually help it become independent. We worked toward that and eventually got there. Yes, there were atrocities in the interim - by everyone involved.
Tens of thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives due to US 'good intentions'.
If we didn't get all wrapped up in the imperialist ego game those lives wouldn't have been so needlessly spent.
Would they have been better off under Japan/Germany?KaiBear said:sombear said:Agree, but nuance matters in foreign policy, particularly in the late 19th/early20th Centuries.KaiBear said:sombear said:They've had that affinity for a long time. It's simple: They're thankful we didn't allow an imperial power, such as Japan or Germany, to take them over.KaiBear said:LOLsombear said:And Filipinos have a much different perspective than Kai. We have the highest approval rating in the world there - always hovering around 90%. Filipinos love America more than Americans do.FLBear5630 said:KaiBear said:Don't take a close look what we did in the PI.ATL Bear said:Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Might warp the halo.
Philippines is interesting. In hind sight it may have been destructive, in real time thet believed they were doing what was best. That is the piece I think gets overlooked, I really believe that not much is malicious, oversight, miscalculation or mistake but the to reason actually has altruistic believes with the capitalism.
Do you still hate the British for burning our capitol in 1813 and arming Indians against our western settlers ?
US criminal acts toward the Filipinos ended 6 generations ago.
A ton of money and a lot of women have been exchanged since then.
Generations die off over time.
Memories fade.
Needs change.
Doesn't alter the historical record in the least.
There were countries who were imperialistic simply because they craved dominance and power. Relative to the Philippines, we had good intentions - i.e., to temporarily assert control and eventually help it become independent. We worked toward that and eventually got there. Yes, there were atrocities in the interim - by everyone involved.
Tens of thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives due to US 'good intentions'.
If we didn't get all wrapped up in the imperialist ego game those lives wouldn't have been so needlessly spent.
FLBear5630 said:All for it, as long as we can still get done what needs to get done. And don't tell me the private sector will step in and do it better, most of the "waste" is for consultants. The "extension of staff" 40 hour embedded consultants are more of a problem than the Fed employee making 100k a year. We pay 4 to 6 times more for each consultant. The "Deep State" is much more than mid-level Federal employees. Look how much the "Belt Way" consultants make? Look at how much the same military and Fed employees make after retirement going to the "private sector".whiterock said:you are quite the establishmentarian.FLBear5630 said:Some of your responses are so factful and thought based that I enjoy your responses. Then you throw out MAGA crap like this: "We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it."whiterock said:We have to do both......FLBear5630 said:THANK YOU! I have been saying this for years, you do not get out of this through budget cuts it is unsustainable. You have to increase revenues. Where we have a disagreement, I believe the Fed can play a role in new investments in tech to expand the market. You guys seem to want the Fed out. I think it is too much for non-govt. Look at Space X, how much of their money was Fed? 380 billion (might be all of Elon's companies don't remember, the point is it was substantial.whiterock said:You are just mad at how big the budget deficit is and want to start cutting in ways that will have negligible reduction in anything other than our national security position.Realitybites said:whiterock said:
Kai is trying to argue that since war never eliminates tyranny or imperialism, etc...., there is no point in resisting it anytime, anywhere.
Not at all.
We just disagree with your side about who the tyrants and imperialists are.
Oh that is crystal clear. It's always us, according to you.
A NATO that has been edging ever eastward at the behest of the MIC in violation of the promises we made to the Russians is much more aptly described as imperialists than a Russia that has moved to secure some neighboring territories populated by Russians.
So what? Zero chance the Russians ever thought Baker's "promise" meant "never." The context was....the USSR was collapsing and we wanted to assure Russia we were not going to rush in and play Risk all the way to the Russian border. And we didn't. We were very deliberate, over the course of many years taking new members. Yes, we admitted the Baltics. Because they asked. We did not admit Finland or Sweden, who didn't ask until RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE. Neither did we admit Belarus or Ukraine, latter of which DID NOT APPLY FOR NATO MEMBERSHIP UNTIL INVADED BY RUSSIA. Same for anybody in the Caucasus. We didn't push east. East begged us to come in. More to the point WE INVADED NOBODY.
Likewise EU member states who are banning political parties, prohibiting the freedom of religion, and arresting people for thought crime are the tyrants. In fact since Covid there hasn't been much daylight between the behavior of those article 5 "allies" of ours and the CCP.
The idea that Europe is a greater police state that Russia is comical, but even if we admit your silly premise, it's worth nothing we've had a lot of "unsavory" allies over the years and will have plenty more in the future. Sure, it's nice to have an Israel or Japan as an ally....stable developed western-oriented systems with constitutional rule of law, many shared social values, and lots of common interests. Common interests are instructive. Turkey is a good ally to have. So is Singapore. In a pinch, we'll even use a Stalin or a Chang Kai-shek.
I'm perfectly willing to go to war when it is necessary. JFK: let's leave Castro in place. Dulles: Let's have a color revolution that overthrows Castro/Bay of Pigs. Me: Cuba is 90 miles from Key West. Annex it, State #51. Militarize and seal the Mexican border.
Wait. I thought you've been saying we are evil imperialists.
NEWS FLASH: Trump is planning to reduce the budget primarily with rapid economic growth. You cannot slash the budget 20% and have an economic growth record to run on in the mid-terms. That budget deficit is part of GDP.....
We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it.
The Dept of State has every Embassy in the world prepare a "labor report" on the state of labor movements in those countries. That's a several hundred officers around the world spending a few days/weeks drafting a massive document which is sent to several offices in the USG who collate and evaluate and send out more reports, to people who then do the same, and on and on..... That process is not just tracking labor as a player in politics....it's coddling of US labor movement. Probably could save a 8-digit number, minimum, just eliminating that one report (and most of the jobs that deal with it). There are thousands and thousands of make-work processes like that going on all over the government. No real reason to track foreign labor movements as anything other than players in their own political systems. Hell, a few of the larger embassies even have designated "labor officer" positions.
Not every thing the Federal Government does is essential. A fairly large percentage of what it does is expendable. If we are the least bit worried about deficits, we have to get very hard-nosed about cost-benefit. Cut big. If you see arterial bleeds, you fix them. If you don't, you know you cut something inconsequential.
There is no risk to cutting too much. We can always add it back if we find out we made a mistake.
Or maybe it isn't crap at all. For sure, we could kill DOEd tomorrow, block grant funding to the states and save a hundred billion or so. We made it to 1980 without one. Are we $250b/yr better off because we have one now?
Math fact: You cannot fix a trillion dollar deficit if you do not take a machete to some big numbers.
Maybe in Intel, which you know a lot more than me, so have at it cut the intel and defense budgets in half. No one will notice...
I saw a twitter post from a sensible guy the other day quoting numerous intel officials saying that the Clandestine Service could be cut from 1500 to 50 people with little loss of effectiveness. Now that is well and truly crap. A 1500 officer CS is Cold War level staffing. So it's hardly unreasonable on its face. But somewhere over a third of those folks are in staff & analysis posts in CONUS. More importantly, force structure is aimed at counter-terrorism. Sure, we could eliminate half of the Conus positions with little impact on operations. And sure, we could restructure the force to meet the emerging great power competition. Reality is, we need to do both.
We did slash the CS in the Cold War demobilization. And then 7yrs later we had to build it back after 9/11. There is a lesson there: you demobilize because you can't afford to maintain max effort. You can always rebuild. Sure, we've had some bobbles along the way, but we're still the mightiest country on earth. So it can be done. Just as every nation in history has done with its military from time to time. You have to demobilize after a war.....and then build back when threats loom.
You are elevating risk out of proportion. If we cut too far, we can always add it back. It's not like trees don't grow back, or can't be logged to thin out for understory habitat, or burned in place to kill pests or disease, etc...... Let's slash some regs & build a few refineries. If we change our mind a decade down the road, we can always close some old ones. Geez we have wasted money on wind & solar. Gotta stop that and build some coal and gas generation, otherwise there won't be enough power for those 40m illegals we've let in.
I'm not the ideologue here. You are..... (wink).
But the bottom line is most of environmental, engineering and transportation are underfunded versus the cost. You cut the transportation spending by 1/2 and people are going to notice.
Underfunded on what basis?
If you eliminate the underlying regulation, you're not underfunded at all.
That's what DOGE is plainly trying to do - kill a big piece of the administrative state by doing away with the underlying regulations that require its existence.
Look at Interior, what they did to the National Forests by reducing "management". We have wildfires all over. Ask anyone that live in the mountains, controlled burns and management is necessary to keep it from becoming a tinderbox. That cost money.
Bad misread. The change in management you cite was not a budgetary thing at all. It was a green initiative, liberals using their power in office on a great moral endeavor - don't scar the land with logging, let nature do its thing.....
So, what half gets cut?
DOEd is a good place to start. We can cut a lot more than half there.
The administrative state is a problem.
Time to pare it back, severely.
It will grow back. Trust me.
Watch, your paring back will end up costing the tax payer more money because it will be outsourced, Defense, transportation, energy, land management, and every thing else the Fed does still has to be done. This is a fight for who will control the trough. Look at Iraq, that is what is coming Blackwater, Haliburton, and the gang are going domestic. And you guys are cheering... Dick and Liz Cheney love this...
Focus: not everything govt does needs doing.
Outsourcing is not a bad thing. Tx does it for inspecting retail gas pumps. It's a lot easier to fire subcontractors than bureaucrats. The subs compete for work and the businesses pay the fees…….
Inspecting weights and measures IS a core govt function = it ensures proper mkt functions.
whiterock said:FLBear5630 said:All for it, as long as we can still get done what needs to get done. And don't tell me the private sector will step in and do it better, most of the "waste" is for consultants. The "extension of staff" 40 hour embedded consultants are more of a problem than the Fed employee making 100k a year. We pay 4 to 6 times more for each consultant. The "Deep State" is much more than mid-level Federal employees. Look how much the "Belt Way" consultants make? Look at how much the same military and Fed employees make after retirement going to the "private sector".whiterock said:you are quite the establishmentarian.FLBear5630 said:Some of your responses are so factful and thought based that I enjoy your responses. Then you throw out MAGA crap like this: "We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it."whiterock said:We have to do both......FLBear5630 said:THANK YOU! I have been saying this for years, you do not get out of this through budget cuts it is unsustainable. You have to increase revenues. Where we have a disagreement, I believe the Fed can play a role in new investments in tech to expand the market. You guys seem to want the Fed out. I think it is too much for non-govt. Look at Space X, how much of their money was Fed? 380 billion (might be all of Elon's companies don't remember, the point is it was substantial.whiterock said:You are just mad at how big the budget deficit is and want to start cutting in ways that will have negligible reduction in anything other than our national security position.Realitybites said:whiterock said:
Kai is trying to argue that since war never eliminates tyranny or imperialism, etc...., there is no point in resisting it anytime, anywhere.
Not at all.
We just disagree with your side about who the tyrants and imperialists are.
Oh that is crystal clear. It's always us, according to you.
A NATO that has been edging ever eastward at the behest of the MIC in violation of the promises we made to the Russians is much more aptly described as imperialists than a Russia that has moved to secure some neighboring territories populated by Russians.
So what? Zero chance the Russians ever thought Baker's "promise" meant "never." The context was....the USSR was collapsing and we wanted to assure Russia we were not going to rush in and play Risk all the way to the Russian border. And we didn't. We were very deliberate, over the course of many years taking new members. Yes, we admitted the Baltics. Because they asked. We did not admit Finland or Sweden, who didn't ask until RUSSIA INVADED UKRAINE. Neither did we admit Belarus or Ukraine, latter of which DID NOT APPLY FOR NATO MEMBERSHIP UNTIL INVADED BY RUSSIA. Same for anybody in the Caucasus. We didn't push east. East begged us to come in. More to the point WE INVADED NOBODY.
Likewise EU member states who are banning political parties, prohibiting the freedom of religion, and arresting people for thought crime are the tyrants. In fact since Covid there hasn't been much daylight between the behavior of those article 5 "allies" of ours and the CCP.
The idea that Europe is a greater police state that Russia is comical, but even if we admit your silly premise, it's worth nothing we've had a lot of "unsavory" allies over the years and will have plenty more in the future. Sure, it's nice to have an Israel or Japan as an ally....stable developed western-oriented systems with constitutional rule of law, many shared social values, and lots of common interests. Common interests are instructive. Turkey is a good ally to have. So is Singapore. In a pinch, we'll even use a Stalin or a Chang Kai-shek.
I'm perfectly willing to go to war when it is necessary. JFK: let's leave Castro in place. Dulles: Let's have a color revolution that overthrows Castro/Bay of Pigs. Me: Cuba is 90 miles from Key West. Annex it, State #51. Militarize and seal the Mexican border.
Wait. I thought you've been saying we are evil imperialists.
NEWS FLASH: Trump is planning to reduce the budget primarily with rapid economic growth. You cannot slash the budget 20% and have an economic growth record to run on in the mid-terms. That budget deficit is part of GDP.....
We could slash most federal agencies by half and the American people would never, ever notice it.
The Dept of State has every Embassy in the world prepare a "labor report" on the state of labor movements in those countries. That's a several hundred officers around the world spending a few days/weeks drafting a massive document which is sent to several offices in the USG who collate and evaluate and send out more reports, to people who then do the same, and on and on..... That process is not just tracking labor as a player in politics....it's coddling of US labor movement. Probably could save a 8-digit number, minimum, just eliminating that one report (and most of the jobs that deal with it). There are thousands and thousands of make-work processes like that going on all over the government. No real reason to track foreign labor movements as anything other than players in their own political systems. Hell, a few of the larger embassies even have designated "labor officer" positions.
Not every thing the Federal Government does is essential. A fairly large percentage of what it does is expendable. If we are the least bit worried about deficits, we have to get very hard-nosed about cost-benefit. Cut big. If you see arterial bleeds, you fix them. If you don't, you know you cut something inconsequential.
There is no risk to cutting too much. We can always add it back if we find out we made a mistake.
Or maybe it isn't crap at all. For sure, we could kill DOEd tomorrow, block grant funding to the states and save a hundred billion or so. We made it to 1980 without one. Are we $250b/yr better off because we have one now?
Math fact: You cannot fix a trillion dollar deficit if you do not take a machete to some big numbers.
Maybe in Intel, which you know a lot more than me, so have at it cut the intel and defense budgets in half. No one will notice...
I saw a twitter post from a sensible guy the other day quoting numerous intel officials saying that the Clandestine Service could be cut from 1500 to 50 people with little loss of effectiveness. Now that is well and truly crap. A 1500 officer CS is Cold War level staffing. So it's hardly unreasonable on its face. But somewhere over a third of those folks are in staff & analysis posts in CONUS. More importantly, force structure is aimed at counter-terrorism. Sure, we could eliminate half of the Conus positions with little impact on operations. And sure, we could restructure the force to meet the emerging great power competition. Reality is, we need to do both.
We did slash the CS in the Cold War demobilization. And then 7yrs later we had to build it back after 9/11. There is a lesson there: you demobilize because you can't afford to maintain max effort. You can always rebuild. Sure, we've had some bobbles along the way, but we're still the mightiest country on earth. So it can be done. Just as every nation in history has done with its military from time to time. You have to demobilize after a war.....and then build back when threats loom.
You are elevating risk out of proportion. If we cut too far, we can always add it back. It's not like trees don't grow back, or can't be logged to thin out for understory habitat, or burned in place to kill pests or disease, etc...... Let's slash some regs & build a few refineries. If we change our mind a decade down the road, we can always close some old ones. Geez we have wasted money on wind & solar. Gotta stop that and build some coal and gas generation, otherwise there won't be enough power for those 40m illegals we've let in.
I'm not the ideologue here. You are..... (wink).
But the bottom line is most of environmental, engineering and transportation are underfunded versus the cost. You cut the transportation spending by 1/2 and people are going to notice.
Underfunded on what basis?
If you eliminate the underlying regulation, you're not underfunded at all.
That's what DOGE is plainly trying to do - kill a big piece of the administrative state by doing away with the underlying regulations that require its existence.
Look at Interior, what they did to the National Forests by reducing "management". We have wildfires all over. Ask anyone that live in the mountains, controlled burns and management is necessary to keep it from becoming a tinderbox. That cost money.
Bad misread. The change in management you cite was not a budgetary thing at all. It was a green initiative, liberals using their power in office on a great moral endeavor - don't scar the land with logging, let nature do its thing.....
So, what half gets cut?
DOEd is a good place to start. We can cut a lot more than half there.
The administrative state is a problem.
Time to pare it back, severely.
It will grow back. Trust me.
Watch, your paring back will end up costing the tax payer more money because it will be outsourced, Defense, transportation, energy, land management, and every thing else the Fed does still has to be done. This is a fight for who will control the trough. Look at Iraq, that is what is coming Blackwater, Haliburton, and the gang are going domestic. And you guys are cheering... Dick and Liz Cheney love this...
Focus: not everything govt does needs doing.
Outsourcing is not a bad thing. Tx does it for inspecting retail gas pumps. It's a lot easier to fire subcontractors than bureaucrats.
Yeah, Cheney's will love you. Haliburton will manage our National Forest. If you believe that outsourcing has saved the US tax payer money, you are probably bought. You retired from the Fed with a pension? Daughter lifetime military, going to retire for a military pension? Let's cut those to save money. Save the tax payers some money.
Sam Lowry said:
In other news, Georgia is experiencing what some are calling its "Maidan moment," with anti-Russian protests brewing in the capital.
What are the odds that these 100% organic and spontaneous riots would break out just as Biden is shuffling off the stage?
Same odds as martial law being declared in SoKo, and Syria on the verge of imminent collapse thus forcing evac of the Russian fleet from Tartus.
Pay attention: WWIII is underway, in the proxy phase.
Not a surprising post. Nothing is more CIA than cheering on Islamic terrorists…as long as they oppose Russia, of course.whiterock said:Sam Lowry said:
In other news, Georgia is experiencing what some are calling its "Maidan moment," with anti-Russian protests brewing in the capital.
What are the odds that these 100% organic and spontaneous riots would break out just as Biden is shuffling off the stage?
Same odds as martial law being declared in SoKo, and Syria on the verge of imminent collapse thus forcing evac of the Russian fleet from Tartus.
Pay attention: WWIII is underway, in the proxy phase.
I'm sure it will end so much better this time.
I wasn't cheering it on, just noting its occurrence and connection to the bigger picture which you reflexively ignore.Sam Lowry said:Not a surprising post. Nothing is more CIA than cheering on Islamic terrorists…as long as they oppose Russia, of course.whiterock said:Sam Lowry said:
In other news, Georgia is experiencing what some are calling its "Maidan moment," with anti-Russian protests brewing in the capital.
What are the odds that these 100% organic and spontaneous riots would break out just as Biden is shuffling off the stage?
Same odds as martial law being declared in SoKo, and Syria on the verge of imminent collapse thus forcing evac of the Russian fleet from Tartus.
Pay attention: WWIII is underway, in the proxy phase.
I'm sure it will end so much better this time.
But, for the record, I indeed would rather a Turkish proxy to be in charge in Damascus than an Iranian proxy, as Syria would then be under influence of a Nato ally rather than a religious theocracy that chants "Death To America" and hires proxies to launch at every opportunity hot attacks against not just our interests but the entire western order. It also sharply curtails Iranian efforts to maintain material support to Hizballah, which benefits both Israel and Lebanon, which would derivatively improve regional stability as a whole. (You want Israel to stop invading Lebanon, you have to stop Lebanon from being used to fire rockets into Israel....). Finally, it means direct Turkish intervention in Syria would not involve Russian or Chinese interests, meaning bringing an errant Syrian regime to heel does not upset the entire international order.
Loss of the Russian base at Tartus is not just a strategic degradation of Russian power. It also means that Iranian submarines now cannot patrol the Mediterranean *(I.E. the entire southern flank of Nato). They are now tethered to home ports in Iran = reduced threat to our CBGs, except on one-way suicide missions.
One must work hard at being obtuse enough to miss all that but, to your credit, you do burn the midnight oil. Knock yourself out trying to explain how it would be, on balance, a worse situation than we have now.
Their plans weren't working out too well. We had intercepted communications to prove it. We didn't care.ATL Bear said:We asked them multiple times to leave and they refused. Not sure you understand what was happening over there. Just look at what they were doing in Korea at that time as a glimpse at the plan.Sam Lowry said:They were at least ready to leave Indochina and all of China except for a small buffer zone against Russia. And again, they requested negotiations repeatedly in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. We chose war instead.ATL Bear said:Wrong. They invaded places like China and Indo-China, signed the Tripartite Pact, and begged us not to interrupt their war machine intentions.Sam Lowry said:Japan begged us to negotiate and was ignored time after time.ATL Bear said:My Great Uncle was on the USS Panay that was sunk in the Yangtze in 1937. He believed it fully intentional including the attacks on the U.S. oil freighters they targeted. After recovering from some minor burn wounds he was then assigned to the USS Raleigh at Pearl Harbor. We had interests in China and all over the Far East that they ramped up their threats. Our sanction was the only peaceful way to get them to the negotiating table. They chose war.KaiBear said:ATL Bear said:The War was anything but criminal. The blunders, like so many conflicts throughout ours and others history, was the post war resolution strategies. WW2 post war strategies had a number of successes and some failures, primarily being easy on the USSR.KaiBear said:historian said:KaiBear said:whiterock said:Good grief your head is full of mush. I mean, really. We are obligated to let an imperial rival power have as much of Asia as it wants and it is of no importance to us? Like we raw materials & export markets are inconsequential to us.....or that Japan & Germany would never consolidate their positions in Europe and Asia then move on to build empire in the Americas? Every war we've ever fought is OUR fault?KaiBear said:historian said:
He refused to support a barbaric war machine. The U.S. was under no obligation to help them with that. FDR did what was in America's interest and the decision to attack Pearl Harbor rests completely on Japan's leaders. It's similar to blaming Israel for the terror attacks on October 7 or the U.S. for September 11, 2001. Blaming the victim is almost always an exercise in propaganda & nothing more.
Roosevelt basically put the interests of the Chinese against the lives of American servicemen.
The war between Japan and China had absolutely nothing to do with the United States .
Cutting off US oil exports to Japan brought on the attack on Pearl Harbor resulting in WW 2.
And over 500,000 Americans died as a result.
When the war was over….China was not conquered by Japan.
But soon became COMMUNIST.
Americans died for nothing.
You're waaay too smart for such crackpottery.
Facts don't lie.
The end results of WW2 simply replaced Hitler and Tojo
with Mao and Stalin.
Not remotely worth the lives of half a million Americans.
Even now Biden seems determined to bring on WW3 despite the unwillingness of Americans to potentially fight and die for a country most couldn't find on a map.
Hindsight is 20-20
True
However repeating the same blunders is criminal.
Especially when it's other peoples lives being put at risk.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between China and Japan. Yet we intervened with an oil embargo anyway.
The security of the United States was not threatened by a war between Germany and the Soviet Union / Great Britain.
Yet we intervened with an undeclared naval war against Germany anyway.
Eventually retaliation from Japan brought the war to the American people and over 500,000 were killed and many
more permanently crippled.
Only to put Stalin in control of much of Europe and Mao to become the dominant force in the Far East.
This is not hard.
FDR blundered but it was primarily the American middle class and poor who made the sacrifices.
And Biden is putting all of us at risk still again.
Russia, Russia, Russia...and of course peace through extremism. You people never learn.whiterock said:I wasn't cheering it on, just noting its occurrence and connection to the bigger picture which you reflexively ignore.Sam Lowry said:Not a surprising post. Nothing is more CIA than cheering on Islamic terrorists…as long as they oppose Russia, of course.whiterock said:Sam Lowry said:
In other news, Georgia is experiencing what some are calling its "Maidan moment," with anti-Russian protests brewing in the capital.
What are the odds that these 100% organic and spontaneous riots would break out just as Biden is shuffling off the stage?
Same odds as martial law being declared in SoKo, and Syria on the verge of imminent collapse thus forcing evac of the Russian fleet from Tartus.
Pay attention: WWIII is underway, in the proxy phase.
I'm sure it will end so much better this time.
But, for the record, I indeed would rather a Turkish proxy to be in charge in Damascus than an Iranian proxy, as Syria would then be under influence of a Nato ally rather than a religious theocracy that chants "Death To America" and hires proxies to launch at every opportunity hot attacks against not just our interests but the entire western order. It also sharply curtails Iranian efforts to maintain material support to Hizballah, which benefits both Israel and Lebanon, which would derivatively improve regional stability as a whole. (You want Israel to stop invading Lebanon, you have to stop Lebanon from being used to fire rockets into Israel....). Finally, it means direct Turkish intervention in Syria would not involve Russian or Chinese interests, meaning bringing an errant Syrian regime to heel does not upset the entire international order.
Loss of the Russian base at Tartus is not just a strategic degradation of Russian power. It also means that Iranian submarines now cannot patrol the Mediterranean *(I.E. the entire southern flank of Nato). They are now tethered to home ports in Iran = reduced threat to our CBGs, except on one-way suicide missions.
One must work hard at being obtuse enough to miss all that but, to your credit, you do burn the midnight oil. Knock yourself out trying to explain how it would be, on balance, a worse situation than we have now.
You'd have to work hard not to see that Iran is one of the main sources of stability in the region.
Israel will always suffer attacks until it ceases its illegal occupations and genocide, or until it ceases to exist as a state. Unfortunately this is no dilemma for someone like Netanyahu. He's clearly chosen the latter.
As for NATO, it's a relic of the past. It can't even defend Ukraine, much less Europe. The empire is finished. We're just hoping it doesn't take the rest of the world with it.
Sam Lowry said:Russia, Russia, Russia...and of course peace through extremism. You people never learn.whiterock said:I wasn't cheering it on, just noting its occurrence and connection to the bigger picture which you reflexively ignore.Sam Lowry said:Not a surprising post. Nothing is more CIA than cheering on Islamic terrorists…as long as they oppose Russia, of course.whiterock said:Sam Lowry said:
In other news, Georgia is experiencing what some are calling its "Maidan moment," with anti-Russian protests brewing in the capital.
What are the odds that these 100% organic and spontaneous riots would break out just as Biden is shuffling off the stage?
Same odds as martial law being declared in SoKo, and Syria on the verge of imminent collapse thus forcing evac of the Russian fleet from Tartus.
Pay attention: WWIII is underway, in the proxy phase.
I'm sure it will end so much better this time.
But, for the record, I indeed would rather a Turkish proxy to be in charge in Damascus than an Iranian proxy, as Syria would then be under influence of a Nato ally rather than a religious theocracy that chants "Death To America" and hires proxies to launch at every opportunity hot attacks against not just our interests but the entire western order. It also sharply curtails Iranian efforts to maintain material support to Hizballah, which benefits both Israel and Lebanon, which would derivatively improve regional stability as a whole. (You want Israel to stop invading Lebanon, you have to stop Lebanon from being used to fire rockets into Israel....). Finally, it means direct Turkish intervention in Syria would not involve Russian or Chinese interests, meaning bringing an errant Syrian regime to heel does not upset the entire international order.
Loss of the Russian base at Tartus is not just a strategic degradation of Russian power. It also means that Iranian submarines now cannot patrol the Mediterranean *(I.E. the entire southern flank of Nato). They are now tethered to home ports in Iran = reduced threat to our CBGs, except on one-way suicide missions.
One must work hard at being obtuse enough to miss all that but, to your credit, you do burn the midnight oil. Knock yourself out trying to explain how it would be, on balance, a worse situation than we have now.
You'd have to work hard not to see that Iran is one of the main sources of stability in the region.
Israel will always suffer attacks until it ceases its illegal occupations and genocide, or until it ceases to exist as a state. Unfortunately this is no dilemma for someone like Netanyahu. He's clearly chosen the latter.
As for NATO, it's a relic of the past. It can't even defend Ukraine, much less Europe. The empire is finished. We're just hoping it doesn't take the rest of the world with it.
When did it become NATOs job to defend Ukraine?